dnf @60%
I stopped reading because I just could not get into this book. There are so many things wrong with it, but I will point out the ones that seemed most prominent to me. I also just want to preface that this is my opinion and I am entitled to it.
I think the biggest issue was the romance. I felt no chemistry between Nova and Phoenix. There were no points of tension, no interactions I could hold onto and savour, and no real romantic turning points or anything. It was all just one big back-and-forth, where Phoenix would be affectionate then suddenly revert to being cold, and Nova going back-and-forth between "I deserve better, I should leave him" and "He's such a sweet mate. I love him." Phoenix was supposedly 'holding back' for 'some reason' (which I'll get into shortly. This one really peeved me off) and Nova just took it at face value. I think what really did it for me, though, was when Nova got kidnapped and Phoenix did not seem to care AT ALL. I remember he was having tea with the blokes, joking around, and then moping in his room drinking whiskey AS NOVA WAS DYING ON THE BORDER. There was no sense of urgency in any of these chapters, and the only way we knew he was somewhat affected was the few one-liners that said, "I haven't slept in x days" and that Phoenix's beard had grown out. But the sentiments held no substance because in those chapters it just seemed like he really, REALLY didn't feel any sense of urgency.
Oh yeah, and the reason Phoenix was supposedly 'holding back' that whole time? Well, it was because he suspected Nova was a Lycan, and that his mating her would put her in a coma. Okay, valid, but WHY WITHHOLD THAT INFORMATION FROM NOVA FOR SO LONG? Phoenix's inability to communicate this is what created so much friction between him and Nova for 50 whole chapters, and upon realising this I wanted to throw my phone at the wall. Look, I get it. Good romance needs good conflict which keeps the characters apart. Phoenix being unable to communicate this information to Nova was NOT a good example of this. Literally, nothing bad would have happened if he'd told her sooner, and I know this because when he did tell her... nothing changed! Nova was just a little shocked but came around to it - obviously, it was not that big a deal, let alone a valid enough reason to withhold this information from her. Withholding it as some grand 'reveal' just caused both Nova and the Reader more distress and frustration as opposed to just saying it early on. Honestly, it made me feel like the 60 chapters I'd just read had gone to waste. The entire first half of the story would have been MUCH BETTER had the conflict been outright established, i.e. Nova may be a Lycan and thus Phoenix can't mate her, and he's keeping her at a distance because he's afraid of falling too hard when he knows he can't have her. THAT is something I can get behind. Meanwhile, because this information was withheld, it just made Phoenix seem like a wet cabbage with no real ability to commit... sorry to say it 🤷
Speaking of which, I feel like the entire first half of the novel was just the same events repeated over and over. Like, to be honest, I can't recall any specific event of the first 40 chapters because they all sorta blurred into one. The story felt really stagnant up until Nova got kidnapped, and even that turned out to be anticlimactic. She escaped in two days, all the while fighting off two rapists, running on almost day two of no water (which is enough time to induce hypovolemic shock, by the way, so her being able to run/fight at this level made no real sense), and running into a witch that conveniently cloaked her tracks. Talk about plot armour.
I feel like the actual stakes of the story were ONLY established around the 60% mark -- that is, Nova must fight in a competition to claim her place as Phoenix's mate. So, it basically took 60 chapters to FINALLY get to the point of the story. Case in point, once again, that this book could have been drastically shortened. Those first 60 chapters felt like they had no real direction or meaning, and this is why - it lacked a GOAL.
Suffice to say, this poor execution of the romance and plot itself was what did it for me. Though I started to like Nova, I just couldn't read on because the romance had been ruined in my eyes, which is really upsetting for me because I feel like it could have been something awesome had things been done with more consideration. There were other things I disliked, such as the side characters who seemed really one-dimensional and forgettable. (Molly, for instance. When Nova first met Molly, Molly went on this monologue that basically crammed all the cliche nerd stuff into three sentences. I really had to laugh at that. There was no subtlety: it was all just thrown in our faces with the expectation we'd automatically come to like her because of it. She had no other depth, and it was honestly a shame. The same goes for most of the other characters, especially Charlie and Leo. The two were basically indistinguishable.)
Just my two cents.